Seymour finally has leverage over a National too weak to pay up

ACT pushed its party vote above 10 percent and towards 11 percent on election night, its third consecutive record. National went the other way, taking just 29 percent of the party vote and zero list seats. That leaves Christopher Luxon negotiating with an ACT and NZ First bloc of around 20 percent, up from the 14 percent that extracted significant coalition wins three years ago.

For business, the question is not who won the night. It is whether David Seymour can finally turn leverage into tax, spending and regulatory change, because on the evidence of the last term, size alone has not been enough.

The junior partner grew while the senior one shrank

The swing is stark. In 2023, National won 38.08 percent of the party vote to ACT’s 8.64 percent. National has now dropped roughly nine points while ACT and NZ First each added about three.

National held its electorate seats only because its own voters split their tickets. RNZ found its winning candidates outperformed the party vote by a median 17.2 points, and concluded Luxon enters talks with “unquestionably the weakest hand a would-be prime minister has ever had.” That reverses the old pattern. In 2023, 60.29 percent of ACT party voters gave their electorate vote to National. This time, National voters propped up ACT’s list.

ACT insiders are not shy about who they blame. Newsroom reported “frustration, and more than a touch of anger” at a National campaign they saw as spending too long attacking Chlöe Swarbrick and too little on cost of living.

A bigger vote did not buy big wins last time

Here is the uncomfortable part for anyone banking on a smaller state. A month before the election, The Post judged that ACT had “failed to get any really big wins out of the coalition so far”, noting the coalition’s forecast $100 million surplus had become a $10.7 billion deficit, while total Crown spending rose from $161.872 billion to $182.691 billion in the year to June 2026. For a party whose central promise is shrinking government, that is a poor scorecard.

Seymour’s own diagnosis is blunt. “I used to think they were like us, but just better at politics,” he told the Listener. “What I’ve realised is that their core beliefs are actually a long way to the left of their branding.”

If he is right, more seats do not change National’s instincts. They only change how hard ACT can push against them.

National has less to give, and less experience giving it

National’s losses cut deeper than the headline number. Its list wipeout ended the parliamentary careers of Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee, the people who negotiated and ran the economic agenda. A weaker, greener National caucus may well dig in to protect what support it has left rather than concede.

Then there is NZ First, also stronger, and with populist instincts that sit uneasily with ACT on deregulation and markets. Three emboldened partners with mismatched ideologies make for slower deals, not faster ones.

The pre-election signals show where the trades might land. Seymour said he doubted National genuinely wanted to break up the supermarkets and offered to help it quietly drop the policy, with National MPs reportedly lobbying him to kill it. That is the “handbrake” role ACT can play cheaply. The harder asks, a flatter tax system or a restructured health budget, are exactly what National is least likely to hand over.

Watch the machinery of government, not the tax slogans

The fiscal backdrop leaves little room for giveaways. Treasury expects net core Crown debt to peak at 43.9 percent of GDP in about 18 months, and ACT’s long-standing 28 percent top tax rate would require deep cuts elsewhere to balance the books. Both Luxon and ACT have floated lifting the superannuation age to 67, which makes it one of the few big structural reforms with a ready coalition majority.

The other is Seymour’s plan to hand each cabinet minister a cluster of departments to merge within 6 to 12 months, and to let ministers hire and fire chief executives, a power now held by the Public Service Commissioner. He calls the result “a smaller executive, but a substantially more powerful one.”

Those two items are the real test. If department consolidation and the super age make it into the coalition agreement with timelines attached, ACT’s record vote will have bought something business can bank. If the deal instead trades away supermarket reform and a few symbolic wins, the lesson of the last three years stands: ACT did its part at the ballot box, and National still decides what it is willing to pay.

Sources

• Newsroom: Act: ‘We did our part’ (2026-11-07)
• RNZ: Analysis: Five fresh new National Party MPs head to Parliament on Tuesday, but at what cost? (2026-11-08)
• RNZ: Election 2026: Has vote splitting saved a battered coalition? (2026-11-08)
• The Post: ACT needs stars to dance with as David Seymour searches for political rhythm (2026-10-04)
• The Post: ACT is the new handbrake party (2026-09-17)
• NZ Herald/The Listener: David Seymour on what he got wrong about National (2026-10-12)
• The Post: Parties confront long-term fiscal pressures as Treasury sounds alarm (2026-10-12)